


Hello, My Old Heart

by littlebabylawyer



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shared Trauma, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 12:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30022047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlebabylawyer/pseuds/littlebabylawyer
Summary: After slaying the great evil and saving the kingdom, Link and Zelda attempt to process their grief and their love in a world that, for the most part, has left the two of them behind. When it comes down to it, all they really have is each other, but neither wants to burden the other with the truth of their affections.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	Hello, My Old Heart

It's the morning after the end of the end of the world, the first morning of the rest of their lives. Without any real deliberation, the pair make their way towards Link's house in Hateno; there's nowhere else that makes sense for them to go. Epona, Link's favorite horse, was still waiting faithfully where he left her in the ruins of old Castle Town, munching on the last of the apples he had given her to keep her happy while she awaited his return. He had not tied her to the post that, years ago, had been part of a door frame to some now long-dead family's house, but took off her bridle and saddle and hung those on the rotting wood instead. After all, when he left her, he hadn’t known what was to face him in the castle, or if he'd fare better against Calamity Ganon this time around. 

In fact, he wasn't sure he even had the chance to fight Ganon head-on last time. When he walked into the sanctum, he was facing an enemy without the majority of his memories and with the aid of a bodiless princess who was surely exhausted from the ordeal of single-handedly containing Ganon for a century, so he had had no certainty that the story would end differently this time around. But it did. They won. Zelda and Link, the descendent of the Goddess and Hylia's chosen hero, succeeded where before they had failed, and the land itself breathed a sigh of relief as it was liberated from the curse that had plagued it for a century. The disappearance of the bubbling purple malice was like the cleansing of a poisoned well, no longer able to sicken everyone it touched from the inside out. 

_Well,_ Zelda had mused, surveying the receding sludge, _perhaps the comparison would be more apt if a rotting carcass sitting at the bottom of the well could seek victims out and force its way down their throats._ Ganon's malice had been appropriately named. 

Despite having occurred less than a day earlier, all of that feels like it could already be weeks ago. By what can only be explained as the fruit of the Goddess’s favor, the newly corporeal princess and her battered knight managed to ride the winding road from Hyrule field toward Hateno village without either of them falling off Epona, whose saddle they shared. Link offered to catch Zelda her own horse, but her arms were not yet quite her own, and Zelda didn't trust her horsemanship—especially given that she was never a natural equestrian to begin with. At her demurring, Link, ever dutiful, dropped to one knee and helped hoist her up onto Epona's back. Zelda was hyper-aware of the strength of his shoulder under her hand and the press of his linked palms under her sandal, and she failed to convince herself that the intensity of her reaction is due merely to his touch being the first she'd felt since she was swallowed by Ganon and dissolved into nothingness. Link had no matching excuse to explain the electricity of their contact, so he made none, and simply ignored the way the curve of her palm caused his stomach to flip. That her knight had fallen in love with her should be none of the princess's concern. He'd buried these feelings before, so he should be able to do it again.

—

But that was this morning, and this is now. Exhausted as she is, Zelda knows she must have fallen asleep on the journey, but Link's arms are steady; he's managed to keep her in the saddle while still guiding Epona's path. She sits tucked closely in front of him, ostensibly holding the pommel for balance, though really, it's the firm forearm wrapped around her waist that prevents her from tipping over sideways. Drifting back into consciousness, Zelda realizes she's come to rest her weight completely on his torso. His warm chest makes for quite the comfortable pillow, she concedes inwardly, and the tickle on her cheek from the hair that escaped his ponytail isn't unpleasant either. If it weren't for the pounding of Epona’s hooves, Zelda thinks she might be able to hear his heartbeat. 

They spend the night at Dueling Peaks stable, but neither Link nor Zelda has much memory of it afterwards. Link vaguely remembers paying the stablekeeper for two beds and an equal number of dinners, and Zelda vaguely remembers wading into the adjoining pond to scrub the grime and oil from her once-white dress, but neither he nor she can remember if they spoke, or what about. It was dark by the time they arrived, and they were tired, to put it mildly. 

Morning comes, and Zelda jolts awake at the unfamiliar sound of birdsong to find the bed next to her already empty. She pads outside to find Link out with Epona, curry brush in hand. He looks far more alert than is warranted at five o'clock in the morning.

_Had he slept?_ Zelda wonders, but refrains from asking. _He must have_ , she reasons—he lay down mere feet from her last night. What's more, she isn't sure she has the right to ask. So she doesn't, so he doesn't tell her, and they resume their trip away from the ruins of her former home. 

Epona carries them back to Hateno, where, when Zelda inquired as to their destination, Link had explained he owned a house—more on the outskirts of the village, really. Zelda wonders if he remembers that his family hailed from Hateno, over a hundred years prior. His family, like her own, are long dead, so she spares him the pain of remembrance and does not ask. She trembles, half in grief and half in guilt, and attempts to curl into herself, though, as she is sitting in a saddle and squashed against Link, she does not have much success. 

Noticing her uncharacteristic taciturnity, Link can tell he must have hit upon a sensitive subject. Knowing that the pain bubbles from somewhere far deeper than can be remedied now, he attempts to lighten the mood instead. Distraction can work wonders. He regales her with the story of how he spent an afternoon catching restless crickets to aid a hapless village boy in his hopeless quest for romance. His strategy works, and Link is rewarded with the bright peals of Zelda's laughter. Still, the weary look on her face remains as they approach the village gate. Link recognizes that look, entirely too familiar with the feelings that cause it, so he offers her an escape from further exertion. 

"I've got a bunch of clothes in a trunk at home," he says, circumventing the issue of her current aversion to social interaction. Even back at the stable, she'd let him do all the talking; one hundred years without small talk has left her feeling awkward. "Why don't we find something for you to change into there, and get something more suited to your tastes at the garment shop in the morning?" He tries to say this casually, but the words tumble out a bit too quickly as he hurries to complete the offer before the implications of the thought have time to take root in his brain. But it's too late, and his mind fixes on the idea; Link realizes in anguish that the idea of her wearing his clothes stirs something in his belly.

_He's as perceptive as ever,_ Zelda thinks, and turns around to face him. "Thank you, Link." Her eyes crinkle as she smiles in gratitude, and the sight of it makes his heart skip a beat. He scolds himself for the way his face heats involuntarily and for the hint of something not entirely altruistic that snuck its way into his offer, thankful that she has turned back around to follow the path of the road. In reality, she turned around again to hide a blush of her own, briefly thrilled by the prospect of something so intimate before remembering she has no right to take advantage of his unselfish generosity. 

They arrive at the house, and Link ushers Zelda inside. "It's not much," he offers as a disclaimer, an edge of shyness creeping into his voice. As if she'd expect opulence, or as if his house is anything other than cozy and welcoming. She circles slowly in the main room, taking in the charming kitchen and the impressive rows of glittering arms displayed on the plaster walls. Zelda's eyes dart quickly away from what she recognizes as Urbosa's scintar; she can't afford to unpack the depth of her grief right now. She swallows dryly and turns her attention upstairs, where Link has already disappeared, making good on his promise to find her some clean clothing. She can hear him muttering to himself as he rummages around in the loft. He returns presently, laden with a few shirts and a single pair of well-worn trousers. The offering is dumped unceremoniously onto the kitchen table.

"These were the only pants I could find that I thought might fit you," he explains, gesturing vaguely at what she understands him to mean as her hips. "And, uh, see if you like any of those shirts." Link is refusing to meet her eyes, his cheeks inexplicably pink. "You're welcome to keep them."

Zelda gingerly lifts up the top shirt on the pile, a turquoise tunic with a lobster embroidered in white stitching. It's soft between her fingers, and the design feels homey. Next on the pile lays a tight-looking red shirt emblazoned with white lettering in a language Zelda is unable to read. Beside her, Link coughs awkwardly. 

"I'm going to go get some wood for the cooking fire." His cheeks are no longer flushed, but he's still avoiding her gaze. He keeps his eyes trained steadily out the window. "I'll give you some time to change and then we can get started on a meal." 

Zelda smiles appreciatively. "My thanks." She barely finishes the short sentence before Link has pulled on his boots and disappeared out the front door. Zelda's not sure why his demeanor has stiffened so suddenly. She gives up trying to discern the reason and turns her attention back to the pile before her. 

Link's clunky formality makes Zelda aware once more of the distance between them. She'd hoped the closeness they'd begun to share during the eve of the Calamity—that same closeness that continued to develop, albeit in a one-sided manner, all throughout the hundred years she watched him sleep and then during the glimpses she was able to catch as he traveled through Hyrule to free the Divine Beasts—would still be present between them, but it appears that this is not the case. 

Consumed by this desire to be close to him, Zelda lifts the cerulean shirt and buries her face in it. She inhales deeply. The shirt smells like Link, or what he must smell like when not covered in flecks of monster guts, as he was when they reunited after slaying Calamity Ganon. It smells woodsy and crisp with a distinctly nutty undertone, a lingering memory of the forests in which he's spent countless days. It’s both comforting and intoxicating. Zelda takes a few moments to study it further. She never had the chance to explore the nuances of Link’s scent in the time before the Calamity and was too busy concentrating on staying in the saddle while they journeyed to Hateno, so she leaves her face pressed in the fabric and continues her empirical analysis. _This is all purely scientific, of course_. Nevertheless, she hopes Link makes good on his promise to give her time to change; she would surely die, melted to a puddle of shame, if he found out what she was doing—even though it all has a perfectly reasonable explanation. 

He doesn't find out, as he's outside berating himself for entertaining a remarkably similar line of thinking, stopping just short of physical self-flagellation with the bundle of firewood he's collected from the nearby forest. Link drags a frustrated hand across his face, cursing himself for his inability to play the role of the dutiful attendant he knows he's still supposed to be. He has no business thinking about her in this way—either her state of undress or the fit of her clothing. Just because they're a hundred years into the future doesn't give him license to forget his oaths. 

The chirping of sparrows perched on the windowsill startles Zelda out of her reverie. She peels off her stained prayer gown and tugs on the lobster-adorned tunic. It's soft and roomy, especially around the shoulders, reminding Zelda that, although Link is not much taller than her, he possesses strength enough to wield the sword that seals the darkness—and a body fit to house that power. Next, she pulls the worn, faded trousers up her thighs. Link's hesitation was warranted, it seems, as they are indeed a bit tight around the hips. Zelda is grateful she chose the longer shirt, as it covers the worst of the thin, stretched fabric. She pulls her fingers roughly through her still-tangled hair, then attempts to arrange the tresses into a loose braid. She'll probably have to cut it, soon. 

A knock at the door signals Link's return, and she calls for him to come in. He enters, armed with the clear and present task of preparing their meal to liberate himself from the awkwardness of earlier. Now, he's all business. Any thoughts he might have about her new attire are immediately banished from his mind.

"I was thinking I'd make us a risotto," he says, dumping the wood by the cooking stove. He drops to his knees and strikes a piece of flint with a small knife, sparking the kindling that lies waiting. Zelda doesn’t protest, and would in fact love a warm plate of risotto, but Link goes on to explain his reasoning before she can assent. "A traveling salesman back at the stable this morning was selling carrots, so I bought a bunch for us." He's now feeding wood into the fire, piece by piece, and the blaze grows nicely. "They're supposed to be good for replenishing your energy."

It's the perfect meal for the duo who have just fought the world's greatest evil. "That sounds wonderful, thank you," Zelda praises. She weeps inwardly at how thoughtful he is and, outwardly, smiles at him. "I don't know about you, but I could use all the energy replenishment I can get." He grins back at her, taken by her first attempt at humor in a century, then turns back to the stove, self-conscious of the size of his smile. It's much too obvious, displays all his emotions much too clearly. Link knows he's loosened up significantly in the way he comports himself, but something about her provokes a reaction much stronger than he would experience even with the closest of his new friends. 

He busies himself with stirring the risotto, and Zelda sits down at the table to shell peas to stir in at the end. Occupied with their tasks, the pair falls silent. While it had felt comfortable on their ride to Hateno, the silence now feels awkward. 

—

Not knowing what to say, Link instead thinks of the question Zelda asked him when they first reunited on Hyrule field.

"Do you really remember me?" She had asked, hopeful and searching. He thinks of what he knows, of what he knew in the past. What he didn't say then and doesn't say now is that the brightest pieces of his memory are all fragments of her. Some time in the past, after they grew friendly but before the threat of destruction clouded their thoughts, he remembers her face. She was radiant as the sun as she directed him to hold the hot-footed frog in a slightly different way so she could get a better photo, trying not to laugh as he struggled to hold the squirming creature. He fell in love with her then, or maybe he already had been, always was, but at that moment, with an unhappy frog in his hands, he was struck by her brilliance and knew he would never recover. 

The memory is impossible to voice—he cannot speak of it to her, the object of his affection. So when he opens his mouth to break their silence, he tells her instead of camping along the Northern edge of the Eldin mountain range, hoping to catch a glimpse of Dinraal, waiting to shoot down one of its scales. He tells her of wandering through snowstorms in the Hebra ice fields, of flurries so thick he couldn't see the ground three yards in front of him, fighting off both monsters and the cold as he sought to find another shrine—anything to shore up his chances of succeeding in slaying Ganon.

She listens to him quietly, thrilled by how talkative he now is, so different from when they first met. As she listens, the things he does not know and that she cannot say sit fluttering in her chest. He doesn't know that she’s been in love with him from the moment he took her hand and pulled her from the water after the failed attempt to awaken her powers at the Spring of Wisdom, breaking their long-standing dynamic of distance and formality. He grabbed her freezing hand with one that was warm and strong, looked her in the eye, and told her there was nothing wrong with her, that she wasn’t broken. She was in love with him then, or maybe she always had been, but the kindness in his smile broke through the layers of her self-loathing long enough for her to realize what a treasure of a man was standing in front of her. She realized then that he was no longer the boy paralyzed by the weight of his responsibilities, but a man driven by duty and a sense of self-sacrificial love for a kingdom that might never recognize the depth of his service, all wrapped up in a kindness so sweet it could corrode her resolve to remain aloof. But she never told him any of this, so he doesn’t know, so he continues to tell her of what the world looks like through his eyes. 

She knows already, in part, what his journey looked like once he awoke in the Shrine of Resurrection. She could sense his sleep for one hundred years, then caught glimpses of him as each month's blood moon approached and Ganon's power over the kingdom grew stronger. Loathsome as the connection was, her bondage of the monster meant that her own abilities increased in parallel. She watched Link struggle past the blank slate of his memory and throw his whole heart into saving a kingdom she knew he did not remember—could not remember—but put his life on the line for anyway. But the details of his journey were hidden from her, so she lets him tell her of the way the sunrise crystallizes over the crest of the mountains and of how, when he rode out over the plains at night, the sound of the hoofbeats seemed to blur into a song he knows he’d never heard before but felt reminiscent of a lifetime past. 

She listens, and she loves him, but she can't tell him. So she picks up the thread on his story about the snow and tells him of a species of frog who can survive being frozen. She tells him how its heart stops beating, and it appears dead, but it will spring back to life when the thaw of spring arrives. He’s never heard of such a frog, nor seen one like it on his travels, and he tells her so. It must have gone extinct sometime in the past one hundred years, they realize, perhaps hunted down to the last frog by the insatiable hunger of the lizalfos, and Zelda once again remembers the devastation wreaked upon her father's kingdom, so different now from the way things used to be, and her heart breaks. 

That was all a long time ago. And this is now.

The pair grow quiet; the risotto is finished. Link serves them both generous portions, and they chase away the dark of the past with rice so creamy it could be butter.


End file.
